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New book- ALTERNATIVE WISDOM FOR BUSINESS
- 6. Why You’re Not Selling Those entrepreneurs that quickly forget that they are humans selling to other humans often run the risk of limiting their sales potential. To be able to sell more than you’re currently selling you’ll need to CONNECT MORE with your customers. And you can only connect effectively with them when you put yourself in a position to understand the dynamics behind their choices, the motivation for their actions, the consumption habits that guide their purchasing decisions, as well as their general likes and dislikes as evidenced by their behavioural dispositions. You’ll need to interact more with your customers to be able to learn these lifestyle patterns which they often unconsciously, and sometimes, consciously display. Your sales performance, as a matter of fact, is tied to the strength of your ‘connection’ with your customers or target audience. 1
- 7. The reputation of your business is crucial to its survival. The consumer trust and confidence you’re able to build will have more direct and even deeper effect on your business’s overall bottom line and general performance in the long run. While advertising can help to put your business out there, reputation is the only thing that guarantees acceptance in the marketplace. Think about it, a good reputation easily earns you: • consumer preference • support for your business in times of crisis or controversy • A substantial future value for your business in the marketplace Not only that, the reputation of a business can enable it to differentiate its product in highly competitive markets, allow it to have premium pricing, and can become the ultimate factor in whether a customer decides to patronize one business over another. So think again, and start paying more attention to the way your business is perceived and how well it is promoted. Reputation Is More Than Just What People Say You Are 2
- 8. The art of running a business and running it successfully is not a joking matter. About 50% of new companies rarely make it past the first five years. What this tells you is that good intentions alone cannot run a business; neither is hope a good business strategy. Therefore, to be able to run a business that can scale, continuously create value, and be positioned as the people’s delight, you would need to get these 3 A’s right: • Accessibility- how readily available are your products/ services? Do people have to search too far to be able to take advantage of your offerings? The key to winning with accessibility is having a well formulated distribution and visibility strategy. • Affordability- if your offerings are too pricey for your target audience it would be difficult to enjoy continuous patronage. To get your pricing right, simply make sure that whatever price you’re charging is commensurate with the value you’re delivering. • Acceptability- no matter how superb it might seem to you, if your product or service is not liked by your target audience, it would never be accepted. The best thing to do? Always test your offering on a small scale first before going full-scale. The Entrepreneur’s Most Important 3As 3
- 9. What If? What if they doubt you? What if they tell you to your face that you won't amount to much? What if they despise your idea or your personality? Here’s the truth: IT DOESN'T MATTER! "Many people succeed when others do not believe in them, but rarely does a person succeed when he does not believe in himself." (Herb True) 4
- 10. Why They Keep Getting All The Sponsorship Money… While scrolling through Facebook one day, I saw something about brands spending millions on entertainers and the likes. The fellow who put up the post was pushing for brands to start spending the same amount- if not more- on students that perform outstandingly well in their different academic endeavours. Good point right? Wait. The writer of that post probably doesn’t know that there’s something called market value. What’s the market value of a first class holder who's a fresh graduate? How many people has he been able to actively influence with his status? HOW MANY students are emerging with first class as a result of his one-time performance? Like them or hate them, entertainers, sportsmen, OAPs and the likes have been able to build a kind of cult following that most excellent students may never be able to garner in a lifetime. And even if they’re able to, they will never be able to make out time to keep their tribe engaged. Or why do you think millions of people keep following popular musicians and the likes? These are able to make out time to keep churning out contents that keep people like you thrilled, surprised, disgusted, offended and ultimately, hooked. And it’s this tribe culture, fueled by an active following that serves as a pull for brands. Overall, your network is what determines your net-worth in business, not sentiments. Business is not charity my friend. Shareholders must recoup their investment and that with interest! 5
- 11. Lack Of Trust Will Kill Your Business Faster Than A Lack Of Ideas During one weekend some months ago, I had a speaking engagement, so I had to visit the barber’s shop for a quick shave. And guess what I saw as soon as I stepped into the shop? Right on the wall was an A4 paper that read: “Dear customer, please pay directly to the manager. 080xxx16574. Thank you.” Now, that’s nothing short of an evidence of a lack of trust. Pathetic! When did a manager become a cashier? See, lack of trust will kill a business faster than a lack of ideas. Suspicion will be the order of the day in every kind of dealing. And the slightest mistake will often result in unwarranted provocation. Certainly, that’s not a good environment to thrive in! To avoid trust issues in your business: • Mean to treat people well, and actually do it • Deal with any form of absurdity before it festers • Recognize and reward exceptional performance and good behavior often • Always listen • Put friendliness above making gains. Yes money is good, but we’re first humans! 6
- 12. Why Do You Keep Forgetting This? When someone said "our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss"- I knew many would find it difficult to understand- especially that second part. Why? We often forget that every door of opportunity is only a passage. And there's never a single passage to all there is for a person to become in life. Even bus stations have different buses coming from and going to the same destination; same with airplanes. Therefore stop the regret. Stop the comparison. That that deal failed doesn't mean you’ll never be able to fulfill your life’s purpose. Move on. That a prospective investor pulled out of partnering with you on that idea doesn't mean you can't still make it work another way. Your losses are shaping your life's story! 7
- 13. Know This Once And For All You are truly visible to your prospects when they consider you first and choose you finally after considering every other option whenever they have a need that matches your area of specialty. Therefore, as a business owner you should strive to move your brand into the “Without-Which-Not” Zone™ of your market. This will mean success and in turn, more visibility for your brand through word of mouth marketing. The point is, proper branding is not just about getting your target market to select you over the competition, but about getting them to see you as THE SOLE PROVIDER of the solution to the problems or needs they have; as the one who not only has what they want, but can deliver it in the best way possible, and also in good time. So, now you know that brand visibility isn’t just about being seen and known, but more importantly, being the preferred one among many options. 8
- 14. It’s ridiculous to think that the next best thing to turn to when someone can’t seem to find a job is entrepreneurship. I don’t mean to sound harsh and insensitive. Far from it. I’m only trying to draw our attention to the fact that real enterprises that build lasting legacies were built by far more important reasons than that of keeping body and soul together. The ones celebrating decades in business do not run companies that were born out of frustration as a result of a faulty national system. No. Rather, serving humanity’s genuine needs and doing so innovatively from time to time formed the basis for the establishment of these kinds of businesses. The likes of Ford (114 years old), Toyota (80 years old), Chevrolet (106 years old), GE (126 years old), GM (109 years old), and Boeing (101 years old) all have one thing in common: they are value-based. Not like we’re doing that badly in Nigeria though, but the decades-old businesses are simply few and far between. Asides Alabukun (almost 100 years), BUA International Ltd (30 years), Genesis Group Nigeria Ltd (about 25 years), Chellarams (95 years), not too many businesses qualify to be in the decades-old category. So what’s the way out? • Business owners should run their businesses with a long-term mindset • Adjust to the times, or risk being outdated, out-smarted, and grounded • Treat your people well • Play the politics of business well • Prioritize customer experience Secrets of 100-Year-Old Plus Businesses 9
- 15. You Don’t Need Branding It's amazing how branding has easily become a buzz-word among small business owners- especially here in Nigeria. As such, many business owners have become overly concerned with how they appear and what sort of impressions they're making out there. Wrong focus! If you're a small business owner, your primary concern should be how well you're fulfilling your promises to your customers with every encounter you have with them. Quality assurance matters should bother you more than logo design. You can always change logos (Pepsi have changed theirs several times), but you can hardly change impressions about your brand. With minimal branding at the early stages of your business, you'll be fine. 10
- 16. TheRealGen Equation For Innovation™ In Business Innovation= Functionality + Simplicity Functionality takes into consideration the following factors: • the extent to which the ultimate purpose of product or service is served • the durability of the initiative • relevance and replicability of initiative Simplicity on the other hand focuses mainly on the robustness of application and ease of use. 11
- 17. The Unfair Advantage Is Real- Even In Business Every winning business enjoys an unfair advantage. If you choose to keep borrowing all you do from your competitors you’ll hardly ever know the flow that comes with having an unfair advantage. A real unfair advantage, according to Jason Cohen, is one that cannot easily be copied or bought. Unfair advantage can come from a number of sources, including: • Superior Knowledge: Having an in-depth knowledge or having certain special skills that are critical to solving problems or creating innovative solutions faster than others will naturally put you ahead of the pack. • Focus: A single-minded, unflinching obsession with One Thing will position you as an authority. This "one thing" is your STRONG reason- your raison d'être. For Google, it’s a focus on developing an unmatched search engine. For you it can be the way you treat your customers • A Clan of Committed Customers: Having a broad network of delighted and loyal customers and partners behind your brand- especially if they make up the ecosystem of your user-base- will qualify your business for enjoying loads of unusual benefits. This is one of the secrets of Facebook, Microsoft and Apple. Other sources of unfair advantage include a united team, special access to certain channels or pool of ready buyers, the right expert endorsements, or a strong reputation for unparalleled customer service. 12
- 18. Stop Taking This Thing For Granted, Please! I've met different entrepreneurs that care less about key aspects of business planning to the detriment of their ventures. One of such areas of key consideration is the Buyer Persona. Buyer personas afford your business tremendous structure and insight. A proper buyer persona helps you decide on where to focus your time and execution efforts, and also guides product/ service development. The end result is that you’ll not only be able to attract the right customers, but also win very valuable visitors and leads to your business. Actionable buyer personas reveal insights about your buyers’ decisions- the specific attitudes, concerns and criteria that drive prospective customers to choose you, your competitor or the status quo. It Arms you with the knowledge you need to align your marketing decisions- from positioning and messaging content and tone through sales channels – all in alignment with your buyer’s expectations. The ROI is this simple: When you know how to help buyers evaluate your approach on their own terms, you build a bond of trust that competitors can’t match. 13
- 19. This Malady Will Run You Out Of Business “Make our brand go viral…” this and other similar instructions are common with those who have little understanding of what social media is about. Good customer engagement on social platforms will do your brand far more good than a mere quest for spreading your brand’s name far-and-wide for no reason. Which would you rather prefer- sales or mere recognition for the sake of recognition? Wake up, smell the early morning coffee! The bottom-line counts more today just as it did 50 years ago. Focus on doing great at all times in your business, and soon enough the crowd will come to seek you out. A golden fish cannot be hidden for too long. Rockstar energy drink came from nowhere to gross a billion dollar in sales in 2011 and earned third place next to Red Bull and Monster. Dear business owner and brand custodian, going viral is not something you can necessarily control when you like. Do well long enough, and maybe someday your brand too will trend! 14
- 20. Storytelling Will Take You Far As I walked into this supermarket in Victoria Island, Lagos in Nigeria and started browsing the grocery section she approached me with a straight face. “What are you looking for?” was her question. I smiled and told her. Then she started marketing as expected. After telling me to buy a new toothpaste for the normal “minty” reasons, I took one last gentle look at her with another smile and asked, “So why should I buy your toothpaste?” Unfortunately, she couldn’t share a story to win me over. So she lost the sale. She failed! Gone are the days of selling the features, and even benefits of your product and expecting to make sales. If you want to save time and sell smart or market right, you’ll need to tell an attention-grabbing story that will make me want to hear more and even buy some. Your new strong reason for winning people over now is your story. Starbucks sells the same coffee at five times the price at which it is sold in Ethiopia from where it is sourced. What's the difference? Starbucks goes the extra-mile of regaling her customers with a story about the origin of the coffee. 15
- 21. To Fail Is Not Enough The founder of Goodyear tires failed 7 times before finally making it big in business. Thomas Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. Did they act right? No. But did they act at all? Now you get the point. Action, especially the right one, will trump years of making the wrong move. Dear entrepreneur, business is hard, if not out-rightly brutal. And getting the right customer in the door with the right amount in hand with full readiness to pay you handsomely with all pleasure is even harder. What’s the way out: More guess-work? Nope! More guided action!! Hope is not a business strategy. Never underestimate the power of advice from an experienced person or the knowledge to be gleaned from the pages of a well-written book. 16
- 22. Get Our Sales Up! Let me tell you a story… Some years ago a company that sold canned red salmon was being outsold ten to one. In desperation, the company called in an advertising agency and said, “Do everything, as long as it’s legal, to get our sales up.” The agency agreed to try and in a few short months, sales sky-rocketed. When the company asked the agency rep, “What on earth did you guys do?” he replied, “All we did was redesign the label on the can.” One of the secret ways of winning more customers and commanding more sales is by being able to influence your target’s perception in your favour. Ask advertising practitioners, branding experts and marketing communicators, as well as sales agents, and they'll all tell you clearly that your product is as good as how you’re able to make it look to the customer. How do you do this? By consistently telling the right stories about your brand, employing the right communication strategies and methods, and by packaging your product or service well. 17
- 23. To Play Or Not To Play In The Luxury Market One of the things I learned while studying Integrated Brand Experience at Orange Academy was how to determine which market to play in, and what should guide that choice. While it’s always desirable to play in the luxury market category in Nigeria, unfortunately, the majority of our populace with some measure of disposable income is in the middle-class. But that luxury market is where most entrepreneurs want to play in. Right here on the Island in Lagos are lots of empty apartments- some have been empty since they were built over 2, 3 years ago. These apartments cost millions of Naira in rent per annum. Why leave the large pool of middle-income earners to go and play in a field that is tightly contested with little possibility of early breakthrough? To succeed in business, there must be a very strong need for your product. And the market must be large enough to keep you in business. The mass market is not a bad place to play in after all! 18
- 24. Two days ago a close friend was telling me of how foreign investors are beginning to gradually pull out of funding Nigerian start-ups. I was not surprised. As one who has a number of friends whose businesses are currently being funded by Facebook, Omidyar Network, and The Gates Foundation, I understand a thing or two about how start-ups operate. From renting offices in the posh parts of town to buying needless official cars, it doesn’t really take long for some start-ups to fold-up. Other reasons for well-funded start-up failures include: 1. Lack of product-market fit. No business can thrive where there’s no market need. 2. Getting out-competed. One of my friends who got funding from several sources for his start-up ended up switching to something else. Why? One of the giant telecommunications companies started offering the same service. 3. Team disharmony. Sometimes, you hear of one person going against the terms of contract or mismanaging funds. 4. Poor marketing. Another friend's funded start-up packed up in less than two months! Part of his company’s offering was renting out co-working spaces somewhere in V. I, Lagos. He couldn’t get the word out well enough. He failed. But is the prospect altogether grim for funded start-ups in Nigeria? Watch with me. Why The Failure In-spite of Funding? 19
- 25. What’s The Value of Your Work? What do you do for a living? Do you consider your work just a job? Is it a necessary evil? Does it give you a sense of mission? Or are you merely whiling away time? You must first seek to understand the inherent value of your work to be able to appreciate the very essence of your craft. How would the salt manufacturer treat his business if he knew that salt is a necessity of life and as a mineral was used since ancient times in many cultures as a seasoning, a preservative, a disinfectant and as a unit of exchange? In fact, Caesar’s soldiers received part of their pay in salt. It is in this sort of understanding lies our basis for living life beyond the realms of observing mere routines and eventually becoming enemies of the ordinary. So, go ahead today and find out and actually understand the higher purpose of your work- and see how you’ll instantly become inspired to start performing better at it. 20
- 26. A Story Of Purpose And Persistence R.H. Macy, founder of Macy's department stores, failed at five different professions: whaler, retailer, gold miner, stockbroker, and real estate broker, before he finally succeeded. When asked what sustained him through failure after failure he replied, "Purpose and persistence." Now, that's what separates those who achieve from those who merely dream! 21
- 27. Still Pumping Out Cash I once read the story of an info-preneur who spent years and several hundred thousand dollars creating a product called “Compact Classics.” He had researched all of the great classic books, fiction and nonfiction, and condensed each book into a two-page format. So that instead of taking weeks to read the original, you get the meat of the book in only two pages. Great idea right? Only that it had just one problem: No one would buy it. And a lot of money went right down the drain. Then somebody had a bright idea. Why not repackage all these powerful two-page summaries under a different title and remarket them to a totally different audience? The new title? “The Great American Bathroom Book.” It worked, and millions of dollars later, the idea is still pumping out cash. By the way, you can buy the same book with either title. Sometimes, all you need is to simply tweak your method. But this doesn’t just happen. You would sometimes need the intervention of someone who knows what to do. 22
- 28. Desperate Times Call For Alternative Measures When we first introduced our brand, we went about looking for customers. We were literally begging just about anyone we perceived to be an ideal target to patronize us. It seemed to work for a while until that strategy failed woefully. We then sat back and re-strategized. We increased our pricing by over 900%, changed our marketing channel, branding and communication style, reworked our hiring strategy and chose to narrowly specialize only on what we do best. We ended up with a niche that no one else is currently playing in in the whole world! And as per customers- almost every week we turn down people demanding for what we offer to make way for only customers who strictly qualify. We have been running by this strategy for years now and it continues to yield great results. So how do you go from begging people to patronize your business to turning down unqualified leads while ensuring that the right prospects keep finding their way in? Just ask yourself: "who EXACTLY is my business out to serve?" If you can get the answer right you'll find it easy to reject those who do not fit in. And why reject though? To save yourself the stress and associated costs of dealing in bad market! 23
- 29. A Timely Reminder This is a reminder to all entrepreneurs going through a difficult time right now; that: - you’re human and mistakes are inevitable - you’re in a continuous struggle to squash your last best record and sometimes you’ll fall way below par in the process - you’re in a game of guts and the glory only comes after you’ve won - your venture will remain as work in progress - there’ll always be a lot to be done - you’re a disruptor offsetting the balance of history in your own favour - you’re a fighter who will never back down till the Trophy is in hand, held high up as a tribute to your endless planning, failing, rising, falling and doing it over and over again till it works! 24
- 30. The Plight Of Erring Would-Be Entrepreneurs There's a rising wave of 9-5ers now favouring starting a side hustle. Not only is this interesting, it's already catching on seriously like wild fire. But here's what I've noticed: Most 9-5ers starting a side hustle almost always go wrong with customer profiling and targeting. You're starting your own business and you think your audience has to be your co- workers and church members only. I laugh in complexity! Soon, this set of erring would-be entrepreneurs begin to realize that their profitability will continue to be in doubt if they have to keep dealing only with people who never stop raising a eye-brow at their pricing, differentiation and positioning. Even the Bible says a prophet is not without honour except in his own house. Here's the truth: your business CANNOT survive on this ridiculous model of serving only those within your reach of comfort. If for nothing else, the last time I checked, familiarity hasn't stopped breeding contempt. Take your market to the gates- right where your ideal customers are at! 25
- 31. Genesis Onomiwo had the rare privilege of being mentored by business moguls and heads of corporations from as early as age 19. About the same time, he started several businesses, failed quickly and eventually survived to become co-founder of one of Africa’s most innovative brands along with his brother Jesse. Till date, the business remains an exclusive real life case-study subject for entrepreneurs as it continues to serve high profile clients across the Victoria Island, Ikoyi, Lekki and Banana Island areas of Lagos and beyond. The identity of this business is a top secret. He makes his home in Lagos, Nigeria with a lifetime collection of books. When he’s not reading or developing strategies for businesses, he’s probably watching a documentary, an action movie or taking a drive through the countryside to enjoy the most entrancing views. He’s also a proud member of Amnesty International, even though he doesn’t do anything with the organization except using it as material for his bio and occasionally signing online petitions (wait, isn't that something?). 26